Reviews

things to agree with those at The Spaw." Living but a few miles away, as vicar of Methley, was Dr. Timothy Bright, medical graduate of Cambridge and ex-physician to St. Bartholomew's Hospital, where he had succeeded Dr. Lopus, the prototype of Shakespeare's Shylock. He, too, had travelled in his youth (he had barely escaped with his life from the Massacre of St. Bartholomew in Paris) and was well acquainted with the medicinal virtues of mineral springs. It was Dr. Bright who first gave the name, " The English Spaw," to Mr. Slingsby's spring. The third of the trio was Dr. Edmund

revealed how migration was part of a household strategy, designed to increase the family's income. However as Sarasú a's research on temporary migrants in eighteenth-and nineteenth-century Spain revealed, it should not be assumed that family members had equal access to the earnings. Whilst female migrants were legally obliged to pool their income, married men often acted autonomously and never returned to their families. The legal system therefore had important implications for household gender relations and the household cannot be considered as extraneous from these external factors.
Many chapters highlighted the complexity of motivations that were not simply reducible to economic factors. Delaney showed that whilst females migrated from Ireland in the twentieth century to secure an independent income, this cannot be isolated from social and cultural changes. Similarly, Wegge's research on nineteenth-century Hessians questioned the primacy of economic incentives, as many wealthy widows migrated to the United States, and for others migration provided the opportunity to marry or escape abuse within the household. Conversely, Henkes showed that the desire to see more of the world, alongside idealised conceptions of the 'civilised' city life in the Netherlands was a prime motivation for German women to migrate in the interwar period.
Another major topic was the type of work women migrants secured. The importance of domestic service was discussed in the chapters by Hahn and Gothard, whilst De Los Reyes noted how female migrants in Latin America have moved from domestic work to export production towards the end of the twentieth century. Some case studies provided fascinating details of the migrants' lives, and in Tidswell's words created a picture of 'society at work' . Gabaccia's research on Italian migrants offered valuable insights into the living conditions of the male migrants as they sought to minimise living expenses and also the struggles of the women who were left behind. However, returnees were able to improve significantly their family's quality of life, evident by their changes in consumption and improved housing. Gabaccia therefore showed that transnationalism was not a new phenomenon, but that it actually enabled nineteenth-century Italian families to obtain a more secure life.
A further important theme throughout the book was the influence of the state and intermediary organisations on female migrants. An enduring and prevalent discourse was that migrant women were ultimately vulnerable and needed protection from moral and social dangers. Delaney reveals how this notion impelled Roman Catholic bishops in the 1930s to call for the regulation of Irish female migration to Britain. Likewise, Henkes reveals how German female migrants were subject to this discourse, which was perpetuated by the media and Dutch and German women's organisations. In particular, Henkes shows that these discourses were not simply perpetuated by institutions that sought to prevent immigration but were also evident in the personal testimonies of the German maids, who sought to distance themselves from what they perceived to be 'other' immoral women. The theme of the immoral migrant woman also featured in Mager's chapter on migrant labour in South Africa, and according to Mager was used by African patriarchs and the state to control the movement of African women.
The book therefore includes an eclectic range of chapters, which successfully highlight the importance of gender relations to the study of migration. One obvious critique is the lack of theoretical synthesis, though this is acknowledged by Sharpe, who stresses the aim of the volume is to help remedy the lack of previous historical research by providing a collection of historical case studies. Sharpe also cites other omissions such as discussions relating to citizenship and provides a useful summary of topics for further research. This includes identities, masculinities and the short-and longterm emotional and physical impact of migration. Overall, the volume should be a valuable addition to the field of gender studies and migration and would be useful for researchers not only studying specific migrant groups, but for those interested in developing a comparative perspective. How central is cultural transition to the migrant experience? The two books here under review examine the integration of east European immigrants into the socio-economic milieu of capitalist society in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries through the lenses of entrepreneurship (Andrew Godley) and political culture (Hadassa Kosak). Both authors set out to comprehend the way in which immigrants from the Pale of Settlement reacted to exposure to cultures which, in nearly every way, were at odds with that with which they were familiar.

University of Leicester
Kosak concentrates solely on the New York experience, providing the reader with a detailed and knowledgeable account of the way in which immigrants reconstructed and politicised their transported culture in order to survive in a fast-developing industrial system. It is the confrontation between immigrant workers from a pre-industrial, nonunionised -barely politicised -economic structure with one in which collective action was both acceptable and productive that provides the framework for Cultures of Opposition. And it is the particularity of nonindustrial versus industrial that determines the temporal parameters of the book. Whilst Godley is concerned with relatively peaceful issues of economic status and mobility, Kosak's is the language of social unrest; of battles, struggles, strikes, workers' rights and survival, the thesis being that, even though civic rights (and also duties) had not been part of life in the Pale, in a society in which citizenship was both prized and available to all who subscribed to the 'American way of life' , the response to exploitation was arrived at through an 'oppositional culture' , which embraced overt and occasionally violent protest. Kosak argues that the pre-1905 immigrant arrivals constructed their new culture by incorporating the dynamics of the shtetl and thus producing an individualistic brand of political culture.
The underlying theme of Cultures of Opposition is that 'political culture informs all social behaviour', and this is explored not only through examinations of the workplace but also through the home, morality, community and the divisions that existed between established German Jews and their newer, greener and less sophisticated co-religionists. Kosak also explores the role of women, informing us that they were 'fully involved in the adoption of a political language of culture' (p.154), by this suggesting that, in New York, women were far more politicised than their counterparts in London. Kosak's detailed accounts of the development and structure of the wholesale clothing trade, the exploitation of the east European workforce by their German Jewish employers and the employment network which embraced family, community, der heim (home in eastern Europe) and religious laxity are valuable assets in enabling an understanding of the cultural changes that took place amongst the early arrived east European immigrants in New York -no doubt similar experiences were undergone by the Italian, Greek and Irish arrivals; all eventually achieving 'a sense of industry and city'. Kosak's players are actors and actresses from a newly forming urban Jewish community sharing the same struggles and informing the Jewish agencies of their (socialist) cultural transformation through intellectuals, newspapers and political magazines. Cultures of Opposition operates within specific and understandable temporal parameters; this is not a criticism but an appreciation that the period was an important one in the construction of a Jewish immigrant culture which emerged in twentieth-century New York, though one perhaps not quite as socialist-led as the author suggests.
Immigrant entrepreneurs, a group Kosak avoids, form the spine of Godley's book, one which explores the combining of 'culture and economic behaviour'. Jewish Immigrant Entrepreneurship in New York and London 1880 -1914, is welcome not only because of its original approach to the study of east European immigrants at the end of the nineteenth century, but, additionally, because of its comparative spatial dimension, a strategy which is all too rarely used in British and American Jewish history. On page one of the book Godley states that 'culture is a fundamentally important component in understanding global economic development'; he then proceeds to demonstrate the way in which the dominant culture, i.e., that of the receiving society, affected economic change and advancement in both major and minority groups. He uses the mechanism of declared entrepreneurship by young east European Jewish immigrant males in the years 1880 -1914 in London and New York in contrast to identification as journeymen -a true journeyman tailor was a skilled craftsman who could 'make a garment through' -both to measure speed of socio-economic mobility and to contribute to debates about British economic decline in the twentieth century. It is a brave and worthwhile expedition, as the resultant well-informed volume not only moves thinking on the infrastructure of the early twentieth-century British economy forward but, as a result of the book's organisation, opens up the debate both to non-economic historians and to those previously unfamiliar with Jewish immigrant history and the way in which it can serve as a tool in the service of social and cultural historians.
In setting up his thesis Godley, as indeed does Kosak, introduces his readers to the influential factors in the movement of east European Jews from east to west during the latter period of the nineteenth century. But where Kosak is anecdotal Godley is statistical and, in many ways, it is the statistics that provide the more graphic images, creating vivid profiles of the structure of the immigrant communities of London and New York in terms of age, gender, marital status, place of birth and occupation. Convinced that the American data (in spite of the American Decennial Census containing no questions on religious identity) is more detailed than the British equivalent, and in order more scientifically to correlate religion and declared occupation, Godley has turned to an additional and rarely used source, the marriage registers of synagogues in London most frequented by east European immigrants, to broaden his information base. This has enabled a persuasive and finely detailed argument in favour of these records which allow the author to construct tables which provide positive evidence of the correlation of place of birth with religious affiliation, and most importantly correlate age and place of birth with occupation, in this instance the declaration, or not, of that of journeyman (tailor) by bridegrooms. It is these records, juxtaposed with data from America, that enable one of the book's main conclusions to be drawn, that the 'apparent' level of upward economic mobility of immigrant east European Jewish males via the entrepreneurial route was faster and far more frequently travelled in New York than in London. Having reached this conclusion there follows the tantalising question: why?
In order to reply a number of sub-questions have to be addressed. These revolve around issues such as differences in regional background, factors determining choice of migrant destination, patterns of migration and, most importantly, dominant cultures. To detail all the answers here would be as unfair to future readers and the author as revealing the murderer in a crime novel review, for this book in many ways is a work of dedicated detection in search of factual evidence to explain a specific phenomenon. For the reader there is a wealth of information and, no doubt, further questions. The denouement, the revelation of which here should in no way detract from reading the book, tells us that it is the dominant cultural differences in the two cities which are the determinants of economic description as well as status. The fact that proportionately far more young male Jewish immigrants in London described themselves as journeymen (and thus not self-employed/entrepreneurs) is indicative, Godley asserts, of the anti-entrepreneurial snobbism which existed in Britain and which remained until very recently. To be ascribed the status of entrepreneur was, the author says, 'a dubious compliment', one which bore the lingering odour of anti-alienism. Conversely, to be regarded as a skilled craftsman was to command respect. By comparison, in New York entrepreneurship stood for self-help, initiative and individuality, all highly respected traits.
Godley concludes that his examination of the two immigrant groups provides a starting point from which to evaluate the anti-entrepreneurial culture identifiable in the British economy and the subsequent decline of British industry. Though some might think that Jewish Immigrant Entrepreneurship is a book by an economic historian for other economic historians, they would be wrong. Accessible, concise, provocative, stimulating, even if there are some areas open to debate, space should be made on their book shelves for this volume by all those who study migration as well as of those who research economic and ethnic history.
The foregoing has been a joint review, deservedly because both books highlight the cultural dimension of the migration experience though through different disciplinary lenses. As such they add considerably to our image of the way in which east European Jews integrated into the socioeconomic and cultural environment of two of the most vibrant and developing cities in early twentieth century society. In both centres the immigrants demonstrated their ability to assimilate culturally and adapt to change, whilst at the same time contributing to both their own and the host societies' cultures. A reading of both books reminds us that the study of the migrant experience is not finite, there is always more to discover and original ways to learn. This book stands at the crossroads of the overlapping scholarships on the Holocaust and on Jewish culture and national identity in post-1945 Germany. It therefore reflects some important new departures in historiography over the past few years, in particular the growing interest in the historical roots of the confident and flourishing Jewish presence in contemporary German culture. Particularly influential has been Sander Gilman's book Jews in Today's German Culture (1995), which famously argued: 'To be a Jew and to be a German after the Shoah was a heightened contradiction, but it was a lived, an experienced contradiction'.
Lavsky largely follows in this mould, but her book is also distinctive in three respects. Firstly, it restricts itself to the very early history of new Jewish life in Germany after the war, the period 1945 -50, when the vast majority of Jews in Germany were refugees and DPs (Displaced Persons) hoping to be resettled in other countries, mainly the US and Palestine/Israel. Secondly, it concentrates on the British zone in northwestern Germany, which is relevant because this part of Germany was home to the largest single community of Holocaust survivors and Jewish refugees and DPs after the war, namely the community housed in the former concentration camp of Bergen-Belsen. British policy towards refugees and DPs in Germany was also complicated by Britain's unique position as the mandatory power in Palestine until May 1948, caught between the Zionist movement on the one hand and the demands of Arab nationalism on the other.
Thirdly, Lavsky attempts to write the history of Holocaust survivors and Jewish DPs in Germany from the point of view of the survivors themselves, rather than from the perspective of policy makers. In this sense her chapter on society, economy and culture in the DP camps of the British zone is the most revealing and most interesting. What comes across, indeed, is the vast complexity of the experience of those Jewish Holocaust survivors who ended up as DPs or refugees in the British zone, and the wide range of cultural activities they engaged in as a means of rebuilding their lives and their sense of self and community. The notion of Holocaust survivors as the passive objects of post-war international politics is thus finally dispelled.
For the most part, however, this is a disappointing book. Apart from the chapter mentioned above, Lavsky devotes most of her time to discussing the handful of personalities who dominated the various committees and parties representing Jewish interests in the British zone, and their interaction with inter-zonal and international bodies, such as the Jewish Agency for Palestine. Consequently we learn very little about the views of 'ordinary' Jewish DPs and refugees, in spite of Lavksy's claim to be writing the history of the She'erit Hapletah (surviving remnant) 'from the bottom up' (p.219). What images did 'ordinary' Holocaust survivors have of Jewish life in Palestine or the US, for instance? What relationship did those who wished to stay in Germany imagine they would have with wider German society? On these issues Lavsky is relatively silent.
Lavsky takes the position that British policies were anti-Jewish but seems to shows little appreciation of the huge refugee problem faced by the British military authorities in Germany after 1945, or of Britain's difficult position in having obligations both towards the Jewish victims of Hitler and towards the Arab majority in Palestine. The Arabs indeed get no mention at all. Meanwhile, Zionism is presented as a 'natural' Jewish response to conditions in the British zone in the immediate post-war years (p.192), and those survivors who opted to stay in Germany are pitied as a tiny remnant of the old, the sick and those who lived in mixed marriages (p.221). Although Lavsky makes explicit reference to Gilman's work at the beginning of her book, she herself devotes only two and a half pages to the development and self-identity of the Jewish community in Germany after the final liquidation of Belsen and the other DP camps in the British zone in 1950-51. There is barely any reference at all to the historical links with today's more vibrant Jewish presence in Germany.
Finally, Lavsky's introduction contains a number of basic factual errors on the post-war situation in Germany. Thus, the provinces east of the Oder-Neisse line were not all 'returned' to Poland in 1945, since a large part of this territory had been in German hands before the war. 'Northern Prussia' (perhaps she means East Prussia) did not 'go back' to the Soviet Union, as again it had belonged to Germany before 1939; after 1945 it was divided between the USSR and Poland. The 'Truman Doctrine' of March 1947 was not 'for the economic revival of Germany' but was much wider in scope: it promised economic and military aid to any country under threat of communism, and was prompted primarily by US concern at the situation in Greece and Turkey. West Germany joined NATO in 1955, not in 1952 as Lavsky seems to imply. The Russians did not decide to revive political parties in their zone in June 1945 as a result of a decision made at the Potsdam conference, since this conference only took place in July -August 1945. Lavsky's book thus tells us much about the development of Jewish national identity among Holocaust survivors in post-1945 Germany, but it is also an incomplete account, which leaves many questions unanswered. This volume by Neil MacMaster offers an excellent introduction to the history of racial ideologies in Europe since the end of the nineteenth century, as well as providing interesting insights into its consequences. The author has used a wide range of sources, mostly secondary, to trace the development of racial ideas after 1870. He aims to focus upon anti-black and anti-Semitic views, although the former approach also encompasses an examination of hostility towards all migrant groups from beyond Europe after 1945.

Sheffield Hallam University
MacMaster tackles the issue of the origins and distribution of the two forms of racism on the European continent. According to the author, the standard view sees anti-Semitism as based on central and eastern Europe, where the majority of European Jews lived after the medieval period, while hostility towards black people emerges from the west European colonial powers, who developed negative attitudes as they expanded overseas, particularly from the eighteenth century onwards. However, MacMaster regards this as rather simplistic and demonstrates how both hatreds existed throughout Europe in the periods which he covers.
The author has certainly carried out much reading, particularly of the secondary material, as well as many of the most important primary printed sources during all of the periods which he examined. In many cases, however, he refers to contemporary material as cited by historians. Whether or nor he may have read a wider range of material remains a minor point. One of the strengths of the book lies in the author's awareness and command of virtually all of the major developments which occurred in the history of European racism, from the rise of anti-Semitism in the late nineteenth century to the growth of hostility towards asylum seekers at the end of the twentieth.
MacMaster divides his volume into three chronological sections. The first part deals with the years 1870 -1914. The opening chapter here covers the rise of racism and eugenics, focusing especially upon Britain and Germany. The second, entitled 'Blackness without Blacks', then moves on to deal with the rise of hostility towards the few black people within Europe during this period, as well as towards those beyond European borders. The third chapter, 'The Rise of Political Anti-Semitism', provides an excellent overview of the evolution of this ideology and its manifestations in the major European states of Russia, Germany, France and Britain. MacMaster rightly argues that this belief remained relatively comparatively weak in Germany.
Part Two of the book deals with the years 1914 -45. 'Anti-Black Racism in an Age of Total War' focuses mainly upon hostility caused by the increase in the number of black people in Europe, as both workers and soldiers, during the First World War, although it also looks at the aftermath of the conflict and goes well into the interwar years. MacMaster deals extremely well with 'Anti-Semitism in the Nazi Era' considering that he only has 25 pages to play with. He focuses upon the centrality of Hitler's Mein Kampf.
The third part covers the post-war years and contains two chronological chapters. The first covers the years 1945 -74. The second deals with the period since then and carries the title of 'The New Racism and National-Populism'. Essentially the third part deals with the rise of racism as a result of the entry of immigrants from beyond European borders after the Second World War. In this sense MacMaster moves away from the central theme of hostility towards black and Jewish people. A conclusion, entitled 'Black and Jew' , brings the central themes of the book together.
For anyone wishing to read an introduction to the history of European racism, it is difficult to think of a better book. The volume by Michael Banton on Racial Theories springs to mind, but that is an altogether more broad ranging, more academic and consequently less readable volume than the one by MacMaster. Indeed the lucidity of the text represents one of the major strengths of MacMaster's book, as the author has used his material extremely well to produce a piece of work which will prove useful to students and the general reader, as well as representing a starting point for the specialist interested in a particular aspect of European racism. The thoroughness of the approach is also commendable, as MacMaster does not seem to have ignored a single episode in the history of European racism since the late nineteenth century. There are several good general histories of Belfast, and many studies of the contemporary conflict by social scientists, but there has been relatively little detailed research on the history of the conflict in the city. Catherine Hirst's well-documented study, developed from a PhD thesis at the Queen's University of Belfast, is therefore to be welcomed. Drawing on previously unused material from government and church archives in Belfast and Dublin, on a wide range of parliamentary papers, and on some quantitative data, she examines the period from O'Connell's all-Ireland campaign for Catholic emancipation in the 1820s through to the savage riots which accompanied the home rule crisis of 1886. The focus insofar as sources permit is on the Pound and Sandy Row, respectively the first Catholic and Protestant industrial suburbs to emerge as Belfast began its nineteenthcentury growth from regional trading centre to major industrial city.

De Montfort University
The book is well written, original and vigorously argued. The central thesis is that Irish nationalism was stronger, earlier, in Belfast than other writers have suggested, and that this -rather than mere localistic ethnic animosity or competition for jobs and housing -shaped the Protestant response and the developing character of community relations in the city. It is argued that the lack of monster repeal meetings in Belfast in the 1840s has more to do with fear of violent reprisal than with lack of national consciousness; that organised physical force in Catholic Belfast in the 1860s was more modern, political Fenianism than archaic, sectarian Ribbonism; and that Catholic Belfast was not late in identifying with the home rule cause, but was in fact an early leader in the movement, from as early as 1872.
The arguments are strongly put, and often supported by new evidence. But the challenging style sometimes leads to oversimplification. On page 189 Hirst concludes, correctly in my view, that the conflict was a political one 'surrounding Irish nationalism, which had been grafted on to an older ethnic divide based on nominal religious adherence'. But the character and cause of this older ethnic divide, and the process by which this graft took place, are not sufficiently explored. If the divide preceded the emergence of nationalism, the latter cannot have been the spark that ignited the conflict.
Similarly, it is argued (p.189 and elsewhere) that the city's divide 'was not a conflict centred around competition for housing or jobs'. The relationship between ethnic consciousness and socio-economic competition needs to be examined more carefully, rather than their being presented simply as alternative hypotheses. The 'economic competition' argument is dismissed essentially on the grounds that socio-economic conditions in the Pound and Sandy Row were broadly similar, which is true. But whereas Sandy Row was an economically marginal Protestant district in a city where the wider Protestant community flourished and predominated, the Pound (expanding after 1870 into the Falls) was the heart of the Catholic community. Even within industrial west Belfast, the main focus of ethnic conflict by the 1880s was no longer the Pound's interface with Sandy Row at its southern edge, but its northern interface with the newly built Shankill district. A comparison between the Falls and the Shankill would reveal clearer socio-economic differences than were found between the Pound and Sandy Row. Although many interesting points emerge from Dr Hirst's analysis of her chosen neighbourhoodsmaterial on school attendance, early nineteenth-century residential segregation, and early elements of a common working-class culture, for instance -she is not in some key respects comparing like with like, and so the comparison does not entirely support the weight of argument placed upon it.
Frank Wright's magisterial, Two Lands on One Soil (1996), continues to offer the most profound insights into Ulster politics and society in this period. Catherine Hirst acknowledges the strength of his work, but might have followed through more fully in the Belfast context his concept of 'deterrence relationships' as the key to inter-communal conflict, rather than shift the emphasis somewhat to 'nationalism and response'. She does, however, add to our knowledge and understanding of politics and society in Belfast before the 1880s, bringing out the importance of the Repeal Association, the Fenian movement and the Home Rule Association in the formation of the Belfast Catholic community, the role of evangelical religion in the Protestant community and the continuing strength of 'rough working class culture ' (p.192) in both communities.

University of Sunderland
The David Gleeson's fine study of the 'forgotten people of the old South' (p.1) is to be welcomed on a number of fronts. In the first instance, this monograph is based on an exhaustive range of source materials, and Gleeson has trawled far and wide in search of documentary evidence. Secondly, he writes well and throughout the book his own findings are contextualised effectively within the historiography of both the American South and the Irish diaspora. Lastly, the author uses some vivid quotations as well as systematic quantitative data to construct a graphic picture of the lives of the ten per cent of the total Irish migrant flow who arrived in the United States and settled in the South. The central argument of the book is that the Irish were transformed from 'strangers' to 'southerners'. Part of this transformation lay in the ability of the Irish to exploit the opportunities available in the expanding urban centres in which they eventually settled.
Irish migrants were keen to adopt the norms and values of white southern society, including slavery. Gleeson directly tackles the thorny issue of Irish migrants and slavery in Chapter 8 and his conclusion is that notwithstanding individual acts of kindnesses towards slaves, the Irish were strong supporters of the institution of slavery. In a telling statement, Gleeson notes that slavery 'provided economic opportunity for Irish immigrants, but, more important, it made them members of the "ruling race"' (p.121). The Irish nationalist leader, Daniel O'Connell, was a vociferous critic of slavery in the early 1840s, yet the Irish in the Southincluding Irish-born Catholic priests -simply ignored his calls for an end to slavery. Gleeson rightly argues that this had much to do with the aspiration to become and remain part of southern society. Irish support for maintaining slavery is best exemplified by the very high rates of participation in Confederacy forces during the Civil War. The Irish were heavily represented in the southern forces and were remembered for individual acts of bravery and heroism.
Violence involving Irish migrants was common and Gleeson recounts some colourful incidents. However, it could be more sinister, such as the sustained attack directed at black communities in Memphis in 1868 which was led by Irish policemen (p.177). As will be clear Gleeson is not afraid to tackle controversial issues, many of which have been ignored by historians of the Irish diaspora.
Another intriguing aspect of this book is Gleeson's assertion that the Irish 'saw themselves as exiles', but 'did not wallow in their exile but used it as a means to various ends' (p.6). On this point, Gleeson is building on Kerby Miller's controversial argument advanced in his book Emigrants and Exiles (1985), yet offering perhaps a more subtle interpretation of the widely cited Irish exile motif. A sense of exile and involuntary migration provided the mental framework for later rationalisations of individual departures from Ireland. In political terms depicting themselves as unwilling migrants made sound sense. The Irish too, it could be argued, were victims of misgovernment; a position similar to that adopted by many southerners regarding the abolition of slavery.
What emerges from Gleeson's book is the benefit of finely grained historical analysis that engages directly with current trends in historiography. While the Irish in the South may have been 'forgotten' until recently, this fascinating though unusual group within the Irish diaspora serves to remind us that the construction and articulation of ethnicities were as much related to the particular circumstances in which migrants found themselves as birthplace, origin and nationality.

University of Aberdeen
Community, Empire and Migration: South Asians in Diaspora CRISPIN BATES (Ed.) Basingstoke, Palgrave, 2001 xiv þ308 pp., ISBN: 0 333 80046 X The chapters in this volume represent a selection of papers presented at a conference organised at Edinburgh University in 1997, marking 50 years of Indian Independence. The theoretically rich papers cut across place and time, ranging from indenture to regional migration, and concluding with a chapter on South Asians in contemporary America. At first glance the volume may appear fragmented and somewhat unwieldy, particularly to the non-specialist reader; however a closer look at Crispin Bates's excellent introduction, which weaves together the key themes into accessible subsections, provides an indispensable navigational aid for the chapters that lie ahead. Each of the 12 chapters is a case study of a specific South Asian migrant community. Issues of identity, imperial legacy, community and communalism among diaspora South Asian populations are interrogated, yielding innovative and challenging analysis on the diversity and adaptability of South Asian migrants, who benefit from interdisciplinary and comparative analysis.
One of the central themes of the book is the legacy of the imperial policy of 'divide and rule' and the various ways it has and continues to impact on modern inter-community relations in countries where indentured and free South Asian populations settled. John Kelly's challenging and theoretically rigorous examination of the Indo-Fijian community during the period leading up to decolonisation, in its transformation from 'coolie' to 'Indian', charts Indian resistance to an imposed identity by rejecting attempts to cast them as the 'Indian of the British imagination'. In comparison to modern Fiji, Mauritius appears to be free from communal violence. Ari Nave attempts to explain this apparent harmony by citing the plural nature of Mauritius, in which no ethnic group dominates political or social life and minority representation is ensured in the political system, inherited from the British. However group preference and allegiance finds outlets in domestic life, in the areas of endogamous marriage and brand loyalty. While communal tension may not have dissipated altogether, the high standard of living on the island ensures economic and class insecurity, at the heart of communal conflict, remains dormant.
Institutionalisation of separate representation of religious and ethnic communities within the constitutions of ex-colonies such as Fiji and Mauritius is a key feature of the maintenance of modern communalism. In other parts of the empire, namely East and Southern Africa communal divisions were manifested in spatial, economic and cultural segregation. Michael Twaddle shows how 'urban imprisonment' of South Asian capital and enforced spatial segregation of Indians away from the African population laid the foundations for Indo-African animosity. In South Africa Thiara argues that despite the success of labour and political leaders in forging African -Indian alliances during the apartheid era, the memories of race riots between the groups has led some Indians to adopt a regressive stance and turn their gaze back to India. This is reflective of divisions between radical elements and conservative business leaders. Amarjit Kaur's study of Malaysia shows how colonial government's management of indentured labour migration resulted in clear ethnic divisions in the workforce, with (South) Indians at the bottom of the pile. However Kaur is optimistic about the future with evidence of Indians taking on a 'Malaysian' outlook. The case of Sri Lanka reflects yet another example of South Asian identity formation and ethnic conflict. The Sinhalese 'myth of origin', developed at the beginning of the twentieth century, imaginatively and legislatively excluded Tamil out-groups by franchise and later immigration restrictions. British colonial policy still haunts post-colonial Britain, as a flow of Tamil refugees seek asylum in Britain. Sumita Chatterjee, in one of the most interesting chapters, highlights the role of women among Indian indentured labour in colonial Trinidad. By employing oral sources she explores how female workers played a creative role in forging community identity, particularly in relation to religious ritual and maintenance of family life, reinventing traditions and cultural forms within the 'private sphere' .
The remaining four chapters deal with the post-colonial period. Chapters 9 and 10 analyse the divergent experiences of Indian immigrants to Pakistan, highlighting differing patterns of assimilation. The last two chapters use very different contexts and approaches to show that religion is not necessarily the primary factor in group identification among South Asian diasporas in the West and those who have returned from working abroad. Thomas Hansen argues that the formation of Muslim identity in contemporary Bombay has not emerged purely in opposition to the growth of Hindu fundamentalism, but rather as a result of travel and work in the Middle East and Europe, creating new economic and social hierarchies of power, enhancing religious and cosmopolitan credentials of the returnees and their families. Linguistic and regional divisions have overtaken religious conflict, when transplanted to South Asian migrant communities in America. Aminah Mohamed ends the book on an optimistic note, by suggesting that current divisions can be bridged by second-and third-generation American South Asians to create a pan-South Asian identity that appeals across religion and language. Only time can tell how accurate this prediction will be. This volume will appeal to political scientists, historians and anthropologists, and should also prove useful for readers interested in comparative diaspora communities such as the Chinese. Crispin Bates should be congratulated for incorporating such a wide range of case studies from various disciplines and approaches into one volume, to produce a stimulating and engaging work. At a time when communal tensions show little sign of abating on the subcontinent, as well as internationally, an investigation of the roots and trajectories of ethnic conflict and diaspora identity formation within and beyond South Asia is very timely.

SHOMPA LAHIRI
Queen Mary, University of London